ld I be looking for?--but, after all, I
do not think I care about having any thing!--there's--there's nothing
that I fancy."

This is a libel at once upon myself and on General Parker's hospitality.
He answers nothing, and perhaps the smile, almost imperceptible--which I
fancy in his eyes, and in the clean curve of his lips--exists only in my
imagination. He again offers me his arm, and I again take it. I have
clean forgotten his existence. His arm is no more to me than if it were
a piece of wood.

"Where are they? where can they be?" is the thought that engrosses all
my attention.

I hardly notice that he is leading me away from the ballroom--down the
long corridor, on which almost all the sitting-rooms open. They are, one
and all, lit up to-night; and in each of them there are guests. I glance
in at the drawing-room: they are not there! We take a turn in the
conservatory. We find Mr. Parker sitting very carefully upright, for his
costume does not allow of any lolling, or of any tricks being played
with it under a magnolia, with a pretty girl--(I wonder, have _my_
cheeks grown as streaky as his?)--but they are not there. We go back to
the corridor. We peep into the library: two or three bored old
gentlemen--martyrs to their daughters' prospects--yawning over the
papers and looking at their watches. They are not here. Where _can_ they
be? Only one room yet remains--one room at the very end of the
passage--the billiard-room, shut off by double doors to deaden the sound
of the balls. One of the double doors is wide open, the other
closed--not absolutely _shut_, but not ajar. Musgrave pushes it, and we
look in. I do not know why I do. I do not expect to see any one. I
hardly think it will be lit, probably blank darkness will meet us. But
it is not so. The lamps above the table are shining subduedly under
their green shades; and on a couch against the wall two people are
sitting. They _are_ here. I found them at last.

Evidently they are in deep and absorbing talk. Roger's elbow rests on
the top of the couch. His head is on his hand. On his face there is an
expression of grave and serious concern; and she--she--is it
_possible_?--she is evidently--plainly weeping. Her face is hidden in
her handkerchief, and she is sobbing quietly, but quite audibly. In an
instant, with ostentatious hurry, Musgrave has reclosed the door, and we
stand together in the passage.

I am not mistaken now: I could not be: that can be no other